{"id":13,"date":"2015-02-15T16:21:41","date_gmt":"2015-02-15T16:21:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/ellie\/?p=13"},"modified":"2015-02-15T16:31:03","modified_gmt":"2015-02-15T16:31:03","slug":"mental-math","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/ellie\/2015\/02\/15\/mental-math\/","title":{"rendered":"Mental Math"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my ninth grade Numeracy course, I have been following the Transition to Algebra<\/a> curriculum while supplementing with other resources and ideas.<\/p>\n

One of the tenants of this curriculum is to begin each day with 5 minutes of Mental Mathematics. \u00a0For each unit, there are generally 13 Mental Math activities suggested in the back of the teacher unit materials that “help students build working memory so \u00a0that they can keep multiple pieces of mathematical information at once.”<\/p>\n

In their guide, they suggest that the Mental Math activities be carried out verbally and in unison. \u00a0I recently went to a TTA PD at New Visions<\/a> and asked the facilitator why they promote verbal call and response rather than written. \u00a0I explained that when I tried this in my classroom, I felt that my 24 students started falling into a heiarchy of verbal mental math where about 6 of them (1\/4) were regularly participating. \u00a0She suggested that I use wait time, which I had, and also explained that their intention was for students to learn from one another and that the teacher should adapt to where the students are, on a whole, getting stuck and retrace their steps back to that place so that more students can participate.<\/p>\n

An example of an activity would be “Adding 9.” \u00a0The first step in the Mental Math activity this day is to add 10, where the teacher would say “23” and the students, in unison, would say “33.” \u00a0Then, step 2 is to is to bridge to Adding 9- “Adding 9 is adding 1 less than adding 10.” \u00a0So the teacher would say “25” and the students, in unison, would say “34.”<\/p>\n

My modification has been a verbal call and response launch to the activity (today with guest speaker Jason)<\/p>\n